How things look through an Oregonian's eyes

August 30, 2014

As I begin to write this post, the Oregon-South Dakota game -- kicking off the 2014 season for the Ducks -- will begin in nine minutes.

I won't be watching it because of two goddamn corporate assholes.

I live in the boonies of rural south Salem, 20 minutes from a sports bar. I have DirecTV, which is still in a three year long pissing match with the Pac 12 Network, with both sides throwing insults at each other (see preceding links).

So I'll be listening to the Ducks game on the radio. Sure, the nailbiter in this mis-matchup will be whether the Ducks win by 70 points or more.

But contrary to what DirecTV thinks, I freaking WANT to watch every Oregon and Oregon State game, even if they are blowouts.

DirecTV has said that their customers will be able to see games "with the most national or conference title implications" on ESPN and other channels DirecTV carries.

That's a stupid thing to say.

Oregon has a good chance of being one of the top teams in the country this years. It's now ranked #3. EVERY game is important to Oregon's national title chances, including the blowouts.

But here's the possibly idiotic thing: yesterday I took advantage of DirecTV's offer to give me a free Genie HD receiver if I renewed with them for another two years.

I don't feel like a complete idiot, just a maybe one, because we had DISH network before and it ended up irritating me even more than DirecTV does. I like everything about DirecTV except the lack of the Pac-12 Network.

So I stuck with the bastards, figuring that all big media companies are S.O.B.'s; it's just a matter of degree.

Like this guy says, there's little or no chance DirecTV and the Pac-12 Network will work out a deal this year. Which sucks.

Just about the only positive take on the situation I could find is this piece, "The Pac-12 Network's schedule is its greatest failure." For DirecTV customers, failure means the only bright spot.

The way DirecTV sees it, the best football games the Pac-12 offers are already available to its customers. That's because the conference lets ESPN and Fox cherry-pick the top games each week, often just six or 12 days before kickoff. [...]

"Even though it is unwilling to invest its best games into its own channel, the conference has still established a high price for Pac-12 Networks and refuses to compromise," DirecTV spokesman Thomas Tyrer said.

Thus the situation could be a lot worse, if the Pac-12 Network kept the best games for itself. I'm thankful it doesn't. But otherwise I'm still pissed at both DirecTV and the Pac-12 Network.

Googling myself today, one of my favorite self-absorbed activities, I came across a profile of a 65 year old longboarder/skateboarder on the NW Skate Coalition web site.

ME, ME, ME!

Several months ago Cory Poole took some photos of me doing my land paddling thing at Minto Brown Park, and asked some questions about why I enjoy senior citizen skateboarding. The story was told earlier this month.

NWSC Rider Profile

Location: Salem Oregon

Rider: Brian Hines

Age:65

Ride: Longboard Larry Walkabout with Kahuna Big Stick

Occupation: Writer / Blogger

Why do you skate?

Brian: I use it for exercise.

How long have you been skating?

Brian: Around 2 1/2 years.

What does skateboarding do for you?

Brian: Skateboarding is an energizing use of your whole body. It’s just you and the four wheels.

OMG! The City Council passed a motion to move forward with 3 hour time limits and other parking policy changes after the agenda shared with citizens said the only discussion on this subject would be informational, no council action required.

I'm not sure whether this simply violates the spirit of Oregon's open meeting law, or the actual letter of the law. But I do know that it is wrong for a government body to tell citizens "nothing will be done about this" before a meeting, and then pass a motion to do something.

Mayor Peterson knew there was a motion coming after the informational part of the parking policy discussion had come to an end. "Is there a motion, perhaps?" she said. Councilor Clem replied, "Yes, you should have copies, as does the Statesman Journal."

So the City Council knew in advance that what citizens were told in the agenda was wrong.

The council was going to use a late August meeting to initiate changes to Salem's downtown parking policy with no advance notice to people who would have wanted to say something about the subject.

Salem City Council at today’s meeting will review a consultant’s study and staff report on parking trends. No action by the council is expected at today’s meeting, but the reports will likely prompt further discussions.

OMG! It sure looks like some people did know the City Council was going to act on reinstating parking time limits, because they came all organized with recommendations that echoed the motion passed unanimously by councilors.

The "they" in the OMG above were Jim Vu, chair of a self-organized group of downtown business and property owners who have been meeting to discuss parking issues, and Dino Venti, a member of the group. I attended the last meeting of the group.

At that meeting, little or nothing was said about reinstating a 3 hour time limit. The only clear consensus among the group, Vu said at the time, was that the City needed to do a better "carrot and stick" job enforcing the ban on employees using onstreet parking spaces.

The petition was emailed to members of the parking group, who were asked to sign it by Vu and Venti. I don't know who wrote up the five recommendations. All I am pretty sure of is that the parking group didn't vote on, or approve, the recommendations as a body.

So 30 downtown business owners called for a 3 hour time limit. Previously, 9,000 citizens and over 50 downtown business owners had supported an initiative petition to ban downtown parking meters and do away with time limits -- which the City Council agreed to do in 2013.

Unanimously.

So here the City Council is not even a year later, voting to undo what it recently did, this time because a few dozen business owners who favor time limits came to speak at a council meeting that other citizens didn't attend because they weren't aware that any action would be taken at it.

Pretty damn sneaky, City officials.

Let people who favor time limits know what you're up to; keep the rest of the citizenry in the dark. Hey, how many people are going to come to a council meeting on a hot day at the end of summer just for the fun of it?

Again, this is no way for public officials to behave.

But it is par for the course for the Salem City Council. What Mayor Peterson likes to call "consensus" is only listening to people who agree with her. It's like me asking "Who is the best blogger in Salem?" and getting a clear consensus: Brian Hines!

Which could have something to do with the fact that I'm the only one who was asked that question.

OMG! The parking group organized by Jim Vu (and Doug/Gayle Doty, I believe) excluded the leaders of the Stop Parking Meters Downtown initiative drive which, as noted above, gathered 9,000 signatures from Salem-area residents to stop the ill-considered meter plan being pushed by City officials.

This strikes me as so freaking crazy, I can hardly believe it.

How can a group of downtown business owners that's discussing parking policies exclude two downtown business owners who led the successful petition drive that caused the City Council to change course about installing parking meters?

Hard to believe, but true. Carole Smith (owner of Grand Theatre) and Stephen Perkins (owner of Cascade Bakery) were invited to attend only one meeting of the parking group -- which I also attended, having invited myself.

They don't agree with much, or most, of the recommendations presented by Vu and Venti. So when Mayor Peterson told Vu and Venti, "We appreciate the unity you're showing," I felt like throwing up on the MacBook Pro laptop I was watching the CCTV video on.

(Note to self: get a cheap tablet to view City Council meetings.)

You know, it's easy to manufacture unreal unity when the only people you invite to meetings are picked because they agree with a predetermined policy position. It seems clear to me that Vu and Venti, along with the Doty's, have been getting along great with City officials because they're telling them what they want to hear:

Virtually all downtown business owners want 3 hour time limits.

Now, this may be true. Or it may not be.

We don't know, because so far only a self-selected group of business owners has taken part in discussions about downtown parking policies. Unfortunately, it really doesn't matter what other people tell the City Council now, because, to not coin a phrase, "The fix is in."

A 3 hour time limit is going to be approved.

This will have little, if any, effect on the main problem the parking group discussed at the meeting I attended: employees using free onstreet parking while they're working rather than paying for parking in the garages.

Before, lots of employees moved their cars every 2 hours to a different block. Now, they'll find it easier, only having to move their cars every 3 hours.

I'm all for making changes to downtown parking policies. But as I told the parking group in a three page letter I left with them, a lack of trust is the biggest problem facing downtown, not a lack of parking spaces.Download Parking thoughts 8-11-14

What Salem's Mayor, City Manager, and councilors fail to realize is that we human beings are very much open to change. But change has to be handled in the right way.

In reality, people do not resist change: they resist having change imposed on them.

Being alive, individuals and their communities are stable and subject to change and development, but their natural change processes are very different from the organizational changes designed by "re-engineering" experts and mandated from the top.

Salem's city government is exceedingly top-down biased. Citizen input is welcomed only when it agrees with what City officials already have decided to do.

This was evident at last night's city council meeting, where Mayor Peterson and councilors rapturously welcomed those who spoke in favor of parking time limits, while ignoring those who said things are fine as they are.

Unfortunately, the self-selected downtown parking group seems to be falling into the same trap of only listening to those who agree with them. This is unhealthy for Salem.

I've left messages with Jim Vu and Dino Venti, asking to talk with them about how the five recommendations they gave to the City Council were arrived at, and by whom. When I learn more about this, I'll share it in another blog post.

I just hope I don't get another OMG! sensation.

Update: I need to briefly mention another OMG! I had while watching the council meeting video. Councillor Bennett said that the council "had to adopt" the language of the initiative petition back in 2013 even though banning parking meters and time limits was a horrible idea.

This is utterly, completely, blatantly false.

How could Councilor Bennett say this? Under the law, the City Council could have rejected the initiative petition and allowed it to go to a vote of the people in May 2014, as the sponsors of the initiative had requested.

Why City officials spout stuff that is obviously untrue is beyond me. I guess they figure that most of the people hearing them aren't paying attention to the falsities, or don't follow issues closely enough to know the difference between true and false.

The City Council has until their Oct 14th meeting to decide whether or not to voluntarily adopt the petition. Council adoption would undermine the democratic process and allow Council to change anything.

If you do not want the City Council to adopt the petition – ask them to put it on the ballot in May. Here are some talking points if you want to use them:

If Salem City council adopts our petition, it will NOT go on the ballot in May for us to vote on. If council voluntarily adopts the petition, they can vote to change it whenever they want, for whatever reason they want. If this goes to a vote of the people, history shows us – no council will touch it for years. We want, and need, that long-term protection.

I have no idea how baristas do this. Actually, I don't want to know. I like living with the mystery of "Wow!" Whether by chance or design, the guy who made my latte achieved a blossom within a heart within primordial ripples of the big bang.

Or something like that.

Needing some reading matter to go with my drink, from a stand by the front door I picked up two free Salem publications, one alternative and one mainstream.

I enjoy both -- Salem Weekly and the Salem Business Journal. My political and cultural views are much more in line with Salem Weekly, but I like to keep in touch with other viewpoints.

My feeling, as I walked back to Cafe Yumm with both in hand, was more the better.

We're fortunate to have journalistic choices in this town. I wish there were even more, including on the blogging front, where I do my thing.

I also have a regular column in Salem Weekly, Strange Up Salem; give it a Facebook like, if you haven't already. While you're at it, give Salem Weekly some Facebook like love also.

The more viewpoints that we have about what's going on, the better we're able to sort out what is true and false, desirable and undesirable. Not in any sort of Transcendent Objective Reality, which I don't believe exists.

In our own subjective, personal, limited human mind. By opening ourselves to as many divergent perspectives as possible, we increase the chance that we can understand the world in a way that works for us.

This is why I subscribe to both the Salem Statesman Journal and Portland Oregonian, along with having an online subscription to the New York Times. And why I read both Salem Weekly and the Salem Business Journal.

By the way, the Salem Weekly web site has a new look. I like it. Seems cleaner, fresher, and more modern to me. The publisher, A.P. Walther, has told me that eventually the confusing WillametteLive name/URL will be changed to something more Salem Weekly'ish.

I deeply appreciate what A.P. and his small dedicated band of Salem Weekly staffers do for our community.

Recently I sent A.P. a link to a story I saw in Portland's alternative paper, Willamette Week. It was about the "Best Rabble-Rousing Community Newspaperman," Allan Classen, who publishes a monthly publication in northwest Portland, The Northwest Examiner. The two, A.P. and Allan, seem to be quite a bit alike.

Salem needs rabble-rousers. Of the non-violent type, naturally. If they make us angry about stuff that needs changing and excited about future possibilities, great!

rab·ble–rous·er

noun \ˈra-bəl-ˌrau̇-zər\

: a person who makes a group of people angry, excited, or violent (such as by giving speeches) especially in order to achieve a political or social goal

August 22, 2014

Since 1977 I've had a marvelous relationship with a Salem woman. She was with me through the end of my first marriage after 18 years. She's stood by my side through the 24 years of my second marriage.

Heck, she I have spent more continuous time together than almost anybody else in my life. So it was bittersweet for us to hug and say our goodbyes today.

The occasion deserved a parting selfie.

Betsy Thelan has been cutting my hair since I moved to Salem 37 years ago. Now she and her husband are moving to central Oregon to live the good retired life in the Sunriver area.

Until recently Betsy ran the one-person Hair Headquarters shop on south Commercial.

She mostly cut men's hair, which is what attracted me to her in the first place. I recall her ad in the Yellow Pages (remember those?) focused on Men's Haircutting. "Sounds good," I thought. I'd get the atmosphere of a barber shop but would be in the scissor-wielding hands of a woman.

I really appreciated Betsy's reliability. This is hard to believe, but during the 37 years I made an appointment with her every 4 to 6 weeks, I only had to go once to another haircutter.

A fact I have repeatedly berated Betsy about, because it was traumatic for me to have my hair cut by someone else who I didn't know and trust. Hey, men can be creatures of habit. I've had the same hair style (if you can call it a "style") since I got out of college. Why mess with success?

That one time -- curse her! -- was when Betsy had the gall to take time off from cutting hair to have a baby. Geez, what a weenie excuse.

I've told her she should have woman'ed up and pushed out the kid in a nearby vacant lot, then gone right back to work, like, supposedly, Vietnamese rice paddy workers do. You should have had more compassion for your customers, girl! I'm still working through the trauma of once having to go to someone else for a haircut.

Of course, in four to six weeks I'll be reliving that scary experience. But Betsy kindly gave me the card of another woman haircutter who, she says, is super-competent. And has been cutting Betsy's own hair.

I'll survive. But I'll miss Betsy. A lot.

Thirty-seven years is a long time. We've shared a lot of stories, a lot of life events, a lot of gossiping, a lot of chit-chat. I know her family, as she knows mine. Not personally; through our conversing about our lives. I felt a tinge of sadness when I left Betsy's shop after getting my last haircut from her today.

Not so sad that I couldn't go to REI and buy some stuff during the outdoor store's 30% off Labor Day sale, though. (Betsy has been working part-time at a Keizer location for a while).

Life goes on. I'm sure my hair will be in good hands with a new haircutter. They just won't be Betsy's hands. And I'm happy that Betsy has finally grabbed the full-retirement gold ring. Moving to central Oregon has forced this.

Otherwise I suspect Betsy would have found it as hard to voluntarily stop cutting hair as I'm finding it hard to accept that she won't ever be cutting mine again. She was great as what she did, largely because Betsy was an excellent conversationalist. We never had trouble coming up with interesting stuff to talk about.

Thanks hugely for those thirty-seven years, Betsy. That's both my hair, and me, speaking.

August 21, 2014

Willamette Week is reporting that a planned Oregon Marijuana, Alcohol, and Other Drug Summit in Madras on October 1-2 has been cancelled. (See the blog post I wrote yesterday about the summit and associated tour.)

The sponsor of a government-funded anti-drug summit has cancelled the event after WW first reported it had been set timed to coincide with the fight over Measure 91, the marijuana legalization measure.

BestCare Treatment Services said late Thursday it was withdrawing from the summit, which was scheduled to include anti-drug activist Kevin Sabet. WW's story raised questions about the timing of a tour that would include Sabet within weeks of voters receiving their ballots for the general election.

I just left a comment on the Willamette Week story.

I hope the whole Oregon Marijuana Education Tour is cancelled also. Last night I called this the "Reefer Madness Tour" in a blog post about this underhanded attempt to get around campaign finance laws.

Oregon's drug abuse treatment community needs to realize that going ahead with the tour will forever associate them with anti-marijuana legalization fanatics like Kevin Sabet and Josh Marquis.

Sabet and Marquis should openly debate Measure 91 proponents, not hide within forums where only opponents of Measure 91 are allowed to speak -- supported by taxpayer funds, outrageously.

“Fatalities are on the rise in Washington after they legalized marijuana,” said Matt Shirtcliff with the Oregon District Attorneys Association.

[Note: Googling this claim, I couldn't find any evidence for it. But traffic fatalities in Colorado, which also legalized marijuana in 2012, are at an all-time low.]

A spokesperson for the association said some members plan to join a “Marijuana Education Tour” that is put on by the same group that recently took out a full-page, anti-marijuana ad in the New York Times.

Anti-drug activist Kevin Sabet will lead the tour, which is funded by a federal grant, through Oregon a month before Election Day and talk about marijuana. The tour is not campaigning against Measure 91.

“Sure it’s around election time, but it’s also to educate the citizens,” said Shirtcliff.

Zuckerman said he’s not buying that argument.

“Calling this an education tour is preposterous,” he said. “Taxpayer money should not be covertly used to influence an election.”

Like I said in my comment, drug abuse professionals should be very cautious about being connected with an underhanded anti-Measure 91 effort. Their credibility will be much diminished if citizens view this "marijuana tour" as a biased attempt to mislead voters about the dangers of legalizing pot.

August 20, 2014

So for self-interested reasons, who would you expect would be against Measure 91, an Oregon initiative that would legalize recreational marijuana?

Why, (1) law enforcement officials, because as long as marijuana is illegal, they have more lawbreakers in this state to justify their budgets; and (2) drug treatment staff, because so long as marijuana is (wrongfully) viewed as a dangerous drug, they have a larger pool of supposed drug abusers to justify their programs.

Currently polling is showing that Measure 91 likely will pass in the upcoming November election. Backers of the initiative recently announced a $2.3 million advertising campaign. The first ad features Richard Harris.

As the former director of the Addictions and Mental Health Services for the state of Oregon, he held the highest position in the state for directing drug treatment and addiction programs. He is volunteering with the campaign.

Pretty damn persuasive, yes? The head drug treatment guy in Oregon is all for legalizing marijuana. So are a majority of citizens in this state, it appears. Little organized opposition to Measure 91 has surfaced from within Oregon.

So what's left for the Reefer Madness crowd to do? How is the law enforcement and drug abuse lobby going to keep the illegal-marijuana gravy train rolling when solid medical research and public opinion are both against them?

Johnson, the chief petitioner for Yes on 91, says the tour appears to skirt campaign finance law, if not outright break it.

“It’s a misuse of federal taxpayer dollars to campaign against a state ballot measure days before people start voting on it,” he tells WW. “Calling this an ‘education campaign’ is preposterous, and if it is legal, it shouldn’t be.”

Not cool. Not at all. Hopefully this sleazy end run around campaign finance laws will backfire on Measure 91 opponents.

Kevin Sabet, the nation's most prominent crusader against marijuana legalization, will give a series of taxpayer-supported talks in 13 Oregon cities just weeks before the state votes on the issue.

That has marijuana legalization supporters crying foul. "It raises a lot of questions about federal tax dollars being used to interfere in a state election," said Anthony Johnson, chief sponsor of Measure 91.

..."Regardless of any mention of the ballot measure by name, it seems pretty apparent they are hoping to influence an election in Oregon using taxpayer dollars," said Johnson.

The Oregon Marijuana Education Tour flyer includes some evidence that the organizers realize how controversial having Sabet and a homegrown anti-marijuana legalization crusader, Clatsop County DA Josh Marquis, speak at these events is.

2-3 experts will be present to share factual information and answer questions for adults & age-appropriate youth. Code of Conduct: Any person disrespectful or disruptive to others will be asked to leave or will be removed.

I suspect that "disrespectful or disruptive to others" includes standing up during the Q & A period and challenging Kevin Sabet about the lies knowledgeable people say he's been telling about marijuana and its legalization.

Unlike Sabet, I have spent more than a decade training in the relevant disciplines he attempts to speak for. I’ve earned degrees in medicine and medical social scientific fields, not social policy like Sabet, and I feel the need to debunk his "moral entrepreneurship" that demonizes marijuana use and ignores scientific research that contradicts his drug warrior claims.

What follows are five claims from his list of talking points—fictions—followed by the facts.

Proving how political Sabet's "education tour" is, he came to Oregon in January to present his anti-marijuana legalization rant at an Oregon legislature committee hearing. Seth Crawford, a sociologist at Oregon State University, debunked his testimony in "Dr. Sabet goes to Salem."

Kevin Sabet appeared at 2pm today before the House/Senate joint judiciary committee to present his anti-marijuana legalization argument (his trip and presentation were paid for by the Oregon Narcotics Enforcement Association–highly ironic considering his persistent railing against the “big marijuana lobby”). I tried to talk to him after the presentation, but he essentially flipped me the bird and ran out of the capital. Very professional. During this presentation, he claimed (among other things) that:

(1) adolescent marijuana use rates have increased in states where medical marijuana is legal (he used data from a single state–Colorado–to support this claim),

(2) marijuana use rates will increase in states that legalize adult recreational use of the drug

(3) 1 in 6 adolescents who try marijuana will become addicted

(4) marijuana use is associated with declines in IQ

All of the above points are demonstrably invalid; furthermore, they are the result of an incredibly narrow and pernicious reading of the collected scientific evidence. My claim—that Dr. Sabet is willfully misleading his audiences while presenting these claims across the nation—is not new or novel, but my presentation of evidence demonstrating his inaccuracies is. [emphasis added]

So the "Oregon Marijuana Education Tour" is a joke.

It's a thinly disguised effort against Measure 91, using taxpayer funds in a decidedly unethical, if not downright illegal, attempt to sway Oregon voters to buy the long-discredited Demon Weed argument.

I hope some people are pleasantly disrespectful and disruptive to Sabet and his fellow anti-marijuana legalization speakers at these meetings. They need to be challenged, because the facts are not on their side.

Colorado and Washington have proved that legalizing recreational marijuana can be done responsibly and effectively. We don't need out-of-staters like Sabet touring the state on the taxpayer's dime, spouting falsities about marijuana.

Like I said, this "Oregon Marijuana Education Tour" should make more voters decide the time has come to stop the senseless war against an essentially harmless herb, not fewer. Vote for Measure 91 in November.

August 18, 2014

Back in 2007 I shared photos of how the Canyon Creek Meadows trail looked four years after the 2003 B and B Complex fire roared through this part of the Jefferson Wilderness in central Oregon.

Here's an update, seven years later.

Yeah, just a little ways from the trailhead we're told this is wilderness. As in wild. As in Thoreau's famous saying, "In Wildness is the preservation of the world." It sure helps us feel better about the world to be away-from-it-all for a while.

Early on in the hike it is evident that regrowth is happening 11 years after the fire. It just will take quite a while longer until trees create the shade that used to mark most of the trail.

We hiked the loop trail in the counter-clockwise direction (from the parking lot) coming and going. The fire opened up views of Mt. Jefferson to the north.

Previously we'd never made the side .7 mile trip to Wasco Lake. This time we did. The trail to the lake starts off by crossing Canyon Creek via some large rocks. Our dog, ZuZu, made a lay down stop in the cool water (temperature was in the mid 80's during our hike).

The vegetation ecosystem not surprisingly has changed after the fire. There wouldn't have been wildflowers here before.

Like I said in my previous post, there's a yin-yang beauty to the post-fire scenery. Death and life. Light and dark.

Reaching Wasco Lake, ZuZu did some stick retrieving. We ate our sandwiches in a few bits of shade that remain along the mostly burned-out shoreline.

Returning to the Canyon Creek Meadows trail, before too long we encountered the first signs of a...meadow! Beautiful.

Don't stop at the lower meadows though. If you have the energy and the time, keep going toward Three Fingered Jack. You'll feel like a character in The Lord of the Rings approaching Mordor. (I think I've got the name right; been a long time since I read the trilogy.) Here's our faithful hobbit dog on the trail.

The sun was almost directly over Three Fingered Jack when we arrived at the upper meadow via a trail that took us up the side of a slope. Walking up Canyon Creek to the upper meadow is easier, but we missed an easy-to-miss side trail on the way up. Snow! In August!

Here I am in my much-beloved Salem Summit t-shirt (great downtown outdoor store) before descending into the upper meadow. Another snow field springs out of the left side of my head.

More yin and yang in the upper meadow. Wildflowers and snow.

Heading back to the Canyon Creek Trail via a path that goes along the creek, ZuZu decided to -- no big surprise -- lie down in the creek. She did this many times during our hike.

One last look back at Three Fingered Jack before we departed the upper meadow.

And one last photo of the encouraging regrowth. Nature knows what it is doing. Forest fires are natural. So is the forest returning after a fire.

August 16, 2014

There's a lot to like about Bend. But I've never thought of this central Oregon city as being on the cutting edge of mixed-use urban development.

Well, I've never thought of my home town, Salem, as being cutting-edge in that way either. In fact, in any way. There's also a lot to like about Salem. However, there's a reason Oregon's capital city is often referred to as So-Lame.

Still, I've figured that since Salem is in the mostly progressive Willamette Valley we had an edge over Bend in urban design, given that Bend is more conservative politically (in-migration of Californians seems to be changing the tenor of Bend, though).

However, the current crop of City of Salem officials is decidedly behind the times. Even for Salem, which always seems to be playing catch-up compared to the much more with-it Willamette Valley cities, Portland, Corvallis, and Eugene.

Our Mayor, City Manager, and City Council are stuck in a timewarp, believing they're planning for life as it was in the 1950's, not today. Their big goal is to build an unneeded $450 million third bridge that would channel people away from downtown into the 'burbs.

More autocentric sprawl is what excites the powers-that-be at Salem City Hall. Making our town more pedestrian and bike-friendly is an afterthought (assuming even that; often it doesn't seem to enter their minds).

Bend planners will share with the public the latest version of a plan to encourage redevelopment of the city center into a “vibrant district” at a final meeting on the topic Monday. The plan focuses on the area between the Bend Parkway and NE Fourth Street and from NE Revere Avenue to approximately NE Burnside Avenue.

The transportation and zoning plan is aimed at converting the area from an industrial and drive-through retail area to a pedestrian-friendly district where people can live, work and socialize. City planners wrote in the plan that “some community members have suggested that a portion of the area could become a new arts or cultural district for the city in the future.”

Industrial and commercial zoning in the area made more sense when Third Street was U.S. Highway 97, before the Oregon Department of Transportation built the parkway, according to the new plan. Proposed changes would include accepting some traffic congestion in the area.

“It should be noted that a certain amount of congestion can be healthy and beneficial for a city or neighborhood,” city planners wrote. “For example, driving more slowly through an area can increase retail sales and real estate values.”

Now, it seems Bend is being forced into this because its urban growth boundary plan was rejected by state officials for not including enough infill development. Regardless, I wish Salem planners had as much smarts -- forced or not.

In Salem there is a ridiculous fear of what passes for "congestion" in our sleepy city. We have rush minutes rather than a rush hour. When people can't park in front of the downtown business they want to visit, they clamor for more parking spaces instead of accepting they sometimes will have to walk a few blocks.

The above-mentioned third bridge is intended to ameliorate the rush hour (or rush minutes) congestion getting into and out of downtown. Whether it actually would do this is unlikely. But City officials have it as a goal.

They don't realize the truth that Bend planners know: no downtown business benefits when cars and people are moving by speedily. It is when traffic slows; when people stop and park; when they walk or bike around an area; this is when economic activity takes place.

If people are living nearby, so much the better. This is the beauty of converting ghastly strip mall streets like Salem's South Commercial and Lancaster Drive into mixed-use development where living, working, and playing can all occur without driving.

John Zidich, president of Gannett's U.S. Community Publishing Divisions' West Group, said the company would consider internal job candidates as well as candidates from outside Gannett to fill the publisher's position in Salem.

Congratulations to Gannett for conducting such an extensive search for a replacement publisher so quickly. It just took nine days to decide that nobody at the Statesman Journal or anywhere outside the Gannett Corporation was better qualified than Horne.

In Pensacola Horne oversaw relocation of the newsroom to a new building, a task that I believe is in the works for the Statesman Journal also. Curious about what other insights regarding Horne's background can be found online, I turned to the Great God Google.

In April 2007, Horne became publisher of the East Valley Tribune in Mesa, Arizona, a Freedom Communications holding. Intrigued by the name, I learned it is a libertarian-leaning private corporation which also owns the Orange County Register, where Horne went next.

In September 2007, after being the East Valley Tribune publisher for just five months, Horne became the Register's publisher. In 2008 he spoke about laying off people and his admiration for a tabloid format such as the Oregonian has gone to.

Understandably, “it's a lot for longtime Register readers to take in and some are unhappy,” reported the OCR, but the "the better choice was to have less content but with as high a quality as possible," said Horne.

“We’re obviously sorry to see Terry go,” said Freedom COO McEachen. “But we wish him and his family the best in what we’re sure will be a busy retirement.”

Absolutely true, given that Horne became the publisher of the Pensacola News Journal in January 2014. Apparently his retirement just lasted a bit over two years.

Salemians who want to get an advance peek at the soon-to-be publisher of the Statesman Journal can watch a Pensacola video interview with him.

I watched the interview up to about the ten minute mark.

As would be expected, Horne is highly knowledgeable about trends in the newspaper industry. He recognizes that online is the future. He speaks about the "disruptive innovation" of Craigslist that is giving away advertising newspapers used to get a bunch of money for.

I have no doubt Gannett has picked the right guy to do the job -- whatever that is -- the corporation wants done in Salem.

My concern is that what is good for Gannett isn't good for Salem. I know this, because the Salem Statesman Journal has been steadily sliding down the ladder of quality journalism, rung by disturbing rung. I can understand why this has been necessary economically.

But I don't have to like it.

Serious investigative journalism is dead and gone at the Statesman Journal. So is in-depth analytic reporting of local issues. Frothiness, puff pieces, and human interest stories rule the journalistic roost. Editorial positions also exactly mirror whatever the Chamber of Commerce wants. Criticism of City Hall is almost non-existent, even though the Mayor, City Manager, and councilors have been doing tons of stuff that deserve journalistic inquiry.

I'm not hopeful about a new publisher guy coming to town.

Since Horne already retired, then un-retired to put in a short stay as the Pensacola News Journal publisher, likely the same is going to happen here. He will do the shaking-up and deal-making that Gannett wants to have happen. Being an outsider, this will be easier for him to accomplish than if a new publisher was promoted from current Statesman Journal staff.

In future posts I'll write more about why the current journalistic trajectory of the Statesman Journal disturbs me.

If it was just the newspaper going down the tubes, that's no big deal. But I believe the whole Salem community is much diminished when citizens aren't fully informed about what is going on in their home town.

The Statesman Journal is no longer a "paper of record." It is barely a community newspaper at all. I'm afraid things aren't going to improve after Terry Horne arrives. Gannett's bottom line may, but this isn't what Salem, Oregon needs.

August 12, 2014

Last night I attended a meeting of a group that has been discussing parking problems in downtown Salem, Oregon. I don't know if it has an official name, so I'll call it the Parking Group.

From what I could tell it is made up of small business owners.

A few outside observers, such as me, also were in attendance. The Parking Group's goal is to come up with some recommendations to improve the downtown parking experience, then send them on to the Salem City Council.

Some background:

Last year a City Parking Task Force was well on its way to inflicting parking meters on downtown. That committee was run in a closed bureaucratic fashion, allowing minimal public input and almost no involvement of downtown small businesses.

An entirely appropriate revolt ensued. Organizers of Stop Parking Meters Downtown gathered 9,000 signatures on an initiative petition to ban meters and do away with the current two-hour parking limit.

Instead of allowing Salemians to vote on the initiative in May 2014, as the organizers preferred, in October 2013 the City Council decided to implement the initiative language immediately.

So either the Mayor and councilors had a quick change of heart about the desirability of parking meters, or they were playing an unethical political game: pretending to favor the initiative so they could later undermine it.

If Salem City council adopts our petition, it will NOT go on the ballot in May for us to vote on. If council voluntarily adopts the petition, they can vote to change it whenever they want, for whatever reason they want. If this goes to a vote of the people, history shows us – no council will touch it for years. We want, and need, that long-term protection.

...Bottom line, Council – implement the initiative if you are honestly committed to making it work; reject it otherwise. Don’t play the annoying political game of pretending to follow the will of the people by adopting the measure, then seek to undermine and ultimately kill it.

Unfortunately, this has happened.

The Parking Group spent quite a bit of time talking about how the City of Salem has essentially stopped enforcing the ban against downtown employees using onstreet parking.

So if you're having trouble finding a space downtown, this is a central reason. City officials also haven't done anything to ban the increasing number of downtown residents from using onstreet spaces that should be available to visitors.

Last night there were lots of different ideas thrown out about how to improve downtown parking. One idea, though, seemed to be favored by everybody in the room.

Use a blend of "carrots" and "sticks" to keep employees (and ideally downtown residents also) out of onstreet parking, and in the parking garages.

Many downtown businesses have urged their employees not to use the now-unlimited onstreet parking, but this is still a significant problem. (How large, nobody knows for sure.)

Carole Smith, a downtown business owner and resident who was one of the leaders of the Stop Parking Meters Downtown movement, handed out a one page "Why Has Downtown Parking Failed?" document. It won't be totally understandable by anyone not into the geekiness of this issue, but most of it is appealingly clear.

A "carrot" to entice employees into the parking garages would be a one-year trial of charging everybody who uses the garages $1. So a full-time employee would pay $21 or so a month to park, $1 a day, much less than the current charge of $58 to $72 a month.

This also would bring in revenue to pay for maintenance of the parking garages, which currently is being subsidized by urban renewal funds at the rate of about $700,000 a year.

At the Parking Group meeting I heard several people say, "We don't have a parking problem; we have a revenue problem." Meaning, the City's push for parking meters wasn't because so many people are thronging to downtown Salem, meters are needed to increase turnover of onstreet spaces and lessen the number of people coming downtown.

Charge for something that used to be free, and basic economics says you'll have fewer customers. City staff estimated a 20% loss of visitors to downtown if parking meters were installed.

So it makes sense to keep the current unlimited onstreet parking policy the City Council unanimously adopted less than a year ago. Several councilors promised to do everything they could to make the new policy successful.

Well, the time has come to keep that promise. City officials need to enforce the ban on employee parking, the "stick," and offer the "carrot" of $1 a day parking in the three downtown garages -- which have plenty of unused spaces.

As does downtown as a whole, likely.

This was the conclusion of a study discussed by the Parking Group. It only went up to 2012, so nobody knows current onstreet parking occupancy rates. Anecdotally, I haven't had any more trouble parking downtown than I did when two-hour limits were the rule.

That study found that only for the noon hour on a few streets did the occupany rate exceed 85%, which is an oft-used standard for concluding "we have a parking problem." This fits with the general impression I have of downtown: most of the time, by no means is it overcrowded with customers and other visitors. Parking is available within a few blocks of where I want to go.

I made a couple of comments during the Parking Group meeting.

I suggested that the members take a look at how the No 3rd Bridge folks have been analyzing traffic patterns on Salem's current bridges, as the situation bears a lot of resemblance to what seems to be the case with downtown parking.

Namely, congestion only occurs for a brief period each day.

I noted that in the Los Angeles area, where my daughter and her family live, lack of parking and freeway tie-ups are a way of life. Yet the area is highly attractive to residents and visitors, and is economically vibrant. We'll have a lot of trouble finding a parking space, then finally enter a restaurant and find it crowded with southern Californians.

My other comment to the Parking Group was an invitation for them to take a copy of a three page "Observations on the downtown Salem parking situation" document I shared with them. Download Parking thoughts 8-11-14

Here's an excerpt from what I wrote:

Parking experts agree on this: downtown parking policies need to be aimed at improving the ambience and attractiveness of urban cores. They aren’t a way to add money to a depleted City budget.

Unfortunately, the backwards attitude of City officials was that parking meter revenues are needed to support the downtown parking garages. I can tell you that this has just about zero appeal to the citizenry, as evidenced by the resounding success of the Ban [oops, Stop] Parking Meters Downtown initiative effort.

August 10, 2014

Like I've blogged about before, my wife and I -- both 65 years old -- are having trouble figuring out what we want to do when we grow up.

More precisely, where we want to live.

Do we keep on living in our beautiful, large, non-easy care, early 1970's house on ten acres in rural south Salem, or do we join the downsizing crowd and move to a smaller home in the city?

Recently we invited a realtor to join us in our this or that, here or there perplexed ponderings. Rich Ford of Windermere Real Estate was recommended to us by some neighbor friends. We already can do the same: recommend him.

Rich is knowledgeable, friendly, experienced, and low-key. We haven't felt pressured to do anything, though in part this might be because we have no firm idea what we want to do.

Laurel and I scheduled an appointment with Rich to talk about our newest notion: finding a moderately priced house in Salem we could purchase now, rent for a while, then move into when our current rural lifestyle screams no mas! to us.

Interestingly, Rich said he had several other clients about our age who were considering the same thing. I told him, "Well, that makes me feel somewhat better. If this idea is crazy, at least we've got some company in our insanity."

Since, we've window-shopped a bunch of listings in south Salem, our preferred part of town, that Rich has been sending to us. Yesterday we actually toured three houses. Standing on the street afterwards, talking about the experience, Rich ably summarized our dilemma.

"You have two sets of screening criteria. You want a house that could be rented now, and you also want a house you'd be happy living in later. Those are different things."

For sure. My wife and I agreed with him.

We're happy where we are now. We love our house. We enjoy living in a natural setting with trails, a community lake, wildlife, a nearly year-round creek, no other houses within sight and just a few within earshot.

Ever since we began thinking seriously about looking for another house, albeit just a backup to our current one, I've been paying more attention to what I like about our present living situation. In short, a lot.

I tend to take where we live for granted and focus on the problems with maintaining our property and having to drive 20 minutes to downtown Salem. But looking at some houses in town that needed quite a bit of work made Laurel and me realize how much we're attracted to a certain sort of residence:

The one we're in now.

Our problem is that we want to keep everything we like about our current house while eliminating the fewer things we don't like. Such as handling a very large high-maintenance yard, making sure two wells run properly, keeping poison oak and blackberries from infesting our acreage like they used to.

Yet the good comes with the bad. And in the city, the bad comes with the good.

We don't like lots of asphalt, dog walks on a leash, street noise, annoying neighbors close by. Philosophically we favor walkable/bikable/energy efficient urban living. Emotionally we are attached to our rural lifestyle.

So we've become like a lot of barely-65 baby boomers. Generally healthy, fit, and mobile, we're starting to look ahead to a time when we may be (or will be) less able to live in the house and setting we enjoy now.

The quandary is: when to make the move? Or at least, when to seriously consider a move?

More and more, we say things to each other like Maybe we should just stay where we are until we die. Intuitively, this is what rings true to me, though "until we die" might be overly dramatic and unrealistic. How about "until we really, REALLY feel we want to move"?

The present is known. The future isn't. We know what we like and don't like about our current living situation. We can thankfully embrace the likes and do something to change the don't likes.

Last night I was lying on our living room carpet, idly patting the dog, when I looked at our vaulted ceiliing in a different way than I usually do -- because of the house for sale visits we'd gone on with our realtor that day.

Besides the ceiling fan whirring around, I was struck by how much I enjoy our almost entirely wood clad home -- walls and ceilings. Hardly any painted or wallpaper surfaces. Back in the 1970's this lavish use of wood was a lot more cost-effective than it is now.

When people walk into our house, they often go "Oh my gosh! This is so cool!" But after living here for 24 years, we've become used to the coolness, the marvelous use of various kinds of wood, the natural setting right outside our large windows.

The house we're looking for, the house that suits us right now, it's the one we already have. We've spent almost a quarter century fixing it up the way we like, removing outdated decor, remodeling the kitchen and bathrooms.

Yes, it makes sense to plan for an ever-older future.

Laurel and I want to keep on looking into other living possibilities. But thinking about moving to a different home has made us look upon our current one with new eyes, appreciating what we have now more vibrantly (I almost said "mindfully," but this is a trendy term that's being overused).

Everybody is different.

I resonate with people I talk with who are super-pleased with moving from a large house in the country to a smaller home in the city. I can understand the pleasure of being a few minutes from downtown, in a walkable/bikable area, with neighborly neighbors strolling by and saying "Hi."

I resonate with them, then think "I want to die hauling branches to a burn pile, walking the dog on a stormy windy night through the woods and around the lake, or using my Stihl backpack blower to whoosh copious fallen autumn oak leaves into the brush with a geezerish cry of "Hasta la vista, you bastards!"

I hate those leaves. I love those leaves. I hate dealing with them every year. I love dealing with them every year. But the hate is outweighed by the love. As with our house and property in general. Sometime life may tear it out of our hating and loving hands.

We just are coming to feel that life itself will find a way to clearly tell us when it is time to move. Until then, why not enjoy what we have until it obviously isn't enjoyable anymore?

Someone spoke to me recently about her 85 year old father, who is still living with her mother on a farm in Nebraska. They have leased out most of the land, but continue to maintain some of it.

She said that when she phoned, her mother said, "Your dad is up on the windmill, trying to fix it." When she was able to speak with her father, he got an earful: "Dad, you can't do that any more. One day you're going to kill yourself."

I thought, he wouldn't mind that. Dying on a windmill, on a beloved farm you've lived on for most of your life. Not a bad way to go. Not bad at all.

August 07, 2014

When I heard that plans are afoot (love that phrase) to remove more large, beautiful trees in Salem's downtown historic district, my interest was aroused.

After all, I followed the 2013 U.S. Bank tree removal debacle extremely closely.

Eventually I wrote a tell-all report, "Outrage: Salem's U.S. Bank tree killings," about how the bank president and City of Salem Public Works director cut down five large, beautiful trees for no good reason, then misled the public about why they did it.

I also was instrumental in saving some large, beautiful trees on downtown's High Street. In this case a property owner trusted the opinion of Salem's Urban Forester, Jan Staszewski, regarding the supposedly diseased condition of the trees.

At my request, a certified arborist (Staszewski isn't one) found that the trees actually were healthy and didn't need to be cut down. The building owner was pleased to hear that, as he wanted to keep the trees but had trusted the City of Salem's Urban Forester.

Every time I drive down High Street I feel thankful that the trees still grace the area south of the Elsinore Theatre.

So this explains why I jumped into Blogger Investigative Action after hearing talk about trees adjacent to the McGilchrist building on State and Liberty being removed. What I learned today isn't nearly as outrageous as what happened in the U.S. Bank tree removal fiasco, but still has some disturbing aspects.

First though, the good news.

After doing some Googling and finding an urban renewal document that describes the $60,000 worth of sidewalk improvements to the half blocks adjacent to the McGilchrist building, which is being remodeled, I phoned the owner's representative who had submitted a letter describing the planned work.

David Holton confirmed that the words "replacement of missing street trees" meant that the intention is to preserve all of the current trees (two on State Street, one on Liberty Street) and add a replacement tree, or trees, since one had been cut down and a new tree wasn't replanted.

He had a "but," though. If the Urban Forester, Jan Staszewski, determined that any of the trees were diseased and should be removed, they would be.

That led me to email Staszewski and ask for copies of any documents related to removal of trees adjacent to the McGilchrist building. Simple request. But these days staff at City Hall often are unnecessarily secretive.

Staszewski replied that he'd been directed to tell me I had to make a public records request, adding, I'm pretty sure (his language was somewhat confusing) that a request to remove the trees wasn't related to any building renovation.

This was irritating, because filing a public records request takes time. I had to fill out a form, scan it, then email it to the City Recorder's Office with a plea that I get the documents ASAP. Which probably won't be as soon as I want and need them.

Typically staff get an estimate of how much it will cost to fulfil a public records request. Then the requestor has to pay that amount before the records are produced. I've had this take a month, though sometimes City staff will email a document quickly at no charge.

I also asked City Councilor Chuck Bennett if he could get the documents about any planned tree removals. Bennett said he would make a request and forward them to me. So far, I haven't gotten any documents. This is bothersome because street tree removals are the public's business. There shouldn't be anything hidden about the process.

Staszewski could have simply explained to me what is going on, and emailed me any relevant documents.

This is what I did when I handled public information requests for the Oregon health planning agency. We never charged for documents, and we never made people go through a bureaucratic process to get information about what the agency was doing.

I drove downtown to take a look at the trees today. I took some photos of the trees on State Street. They're large and beautiful. But I couldn't assess their health, not being a tree expert. However, someone who is agreed to give me an assessment. Which in summary was:

I believe the tree [on the left in the photo above] to be in a state of decline. It is not knowable at this time if any measures taken could hold off or reverse the decline.

So it may be advisable to remove the tree, or it may not. More study is needed. And not just by the City's Urban Forester, Jan Staszewski. This was one of my points in a blog post about the High Street trees that had been incorrectly diagnosed as diseased.

I don't blame the property owners for wanting to have the trees removed, since the City of Salem erroneously told them that the trees were diseased.

I do blame Urban Forester Jan Staszewski and Public Works Director Peter Fernandez for not getting a second or third opinion on the condition of the Upright European Hornbeams.

Cutting down beautiful mature downtown street trees that are 40 to 50 years old, 35 to 40 feet high, and 12 to 19 inches in diameter shouldn't be done lightly. Very good reasons for doing so have to be supported by solid arborist evidence.

Which raises a question for me: if the City of Salem Public Works Department was wrong when it decided these trees should be cut down rather than pruned, what else is the Department wrong about?

Meaning, if solid facts and expert advice aren't guiding Public Works decision-making, then what else is?

As should be obvious, I've lost trust in the City of Salem's ability to properly manage and take care of its many street trees. I've heard too many stories about bad tree decisions (one told by myself) to uncritically accept a tree removal recommendation by city staff.

Large beautiful street trees, especially in the downtown area, are a valuable asset. In this case it's great that the owner of the McGilchrist building recognizes this. However, they are leaving it up to the Urban Forester to decide whether all of the existing trees can remain.

As noted above, I strongly feel that second or third opinions by certified arborists should be required before a large street tree is removed by the City of Salem due to supposed poor health.

My wife and I live on ten rural acres. We frequently get advice about what to do with a tree that is having problems. We've found that tree experts will disagree about whether a tree can be saved or treated. Since we're talking about living public assets that may be worth tens of thousands of dollars, it makes sense to get a second or third opinion before cutting down a tree.

Further, I was told by the tree expert who inspected the trees on the State Street side of the McGilchrist building that prior sidewalk repairs by the City seem to be what caused the tree to go into decline. This points to a problem not only with tree maintenance, but general maintenance by the City of Salem.

Not nearly enough is being done.

The City's parking garages have a lot of deferred maintenance. So does the Civic Center, many millions of dollars worth. My wife and I observe recently planted street trees dying for lack of care. Other trees have gotten a pruning hatchet job, either by a property owner who didn't care about proper pruning, or incompetent City staff.

It makes no sense for City officials to let existing assets deteriorate while trying to foist an unneeded $425 million third bridge or overpriced $85 million police facility and Civic Center project on taxpayers. Let's keep what we have in good repair before building any new stuff.

It bothers me to see large beautiful street trees treated like disposable junk, rather than the precious commodity they really are. Hopefully much careful thought and research will go into deciding whether any of the McGilchrist building trees need to be cut down, or whether all can be saved through expert arborist care.

It also bothers me when information about the public's business, such as the planned removal of street trees is so difficult to get from the City of Salem. City staff should be open, transparent, and helpful when contacted by citizens, not closed, secretive, and distant.

But this is one more sign that newpapers are struggling in an increasingly online age.

And Gannett isn't fighting in a heroic fashion, having a goal of preserving high journalistic standards even if it means going out of business one day. Rather, as a Forbes piece puts it, "Gannett Spin-Off Makes the Score Wall Street 4, Public Service-0."

But when the notion of “maximizing shareholder value” is bandied about, we have to ask who are the shareholders that are demanding more “value,” which really means a higher stock price. Today’s shareholders are not individuals, but are huge institutional investors, such as pension funds, mutual funds and hedge funds that all demand outsized returns. They have a Wall-Street-Gordon-Gekko-greed-is-good mentality.

In the good old days (ahh, nostalgia) most newspaper and many magazine owners thought of their publications as delivering useful, important news and information to serve the public good, convenience and necessity, and were typically guided by the tenants of responsible journalism as well as, and often before, profits.

What seems to have happened in the four recent spinoffs is that the media companies involved have spun off anything that smacks of public service. Separate the profits from the journalism – keep the state, throw away the church.

Wall Street 4 – Public Service 0. [Referring to three previous media company restructurings, plus Gannett.]

A New York Times story on the Gannett spin-off of its newspaper assets garnered some reader comments that made me think "right on" as regards the depressed journalistic state of the Salem Statesman Journal.

Here's a sampling:

The problem here isn't about print vs digital. That argument is dead, and print has lost. The problem is what is going to happen to journalism in the process.

This is just like the good ol' days when the rail companies threw away the railroads to keep the real estate businesses; now the newspaper and other print companies are throwing away the print and keeping the other businesses. It is obvious to everyone that print papers are dying, just like Life, Look and Time et al have died. The news is in your pocket and on screens in elevators.

"My local paper" which is a shadow of its former self is a Gannett property. So is the paper where I used to live, and it's also a shadow of its former self.

More importantly, this action is the result of turning over to a bunch of crass and greedy bean-counters a once-proud company that had been run by journalists and was committed to responsible journalism. A democracy/republic cannot survive without an informed citizenry, and this move further weakens the backbone of our nation.

"Media Giant Gannett to Spin Off USA Today and Print Business" . . . to die. Age old corporate strategy. Much lower shut down costs.

Where have gone the days when people who owned the papers were passionate about the news and breaking stories. Journalism is not just a commodity that is beholden to the bottom line. It's a lot like art in that if we don't have good journalism we lose a part of our humanity and some day it may mean our democracy. How much profit is enough? This may be the question of our times.

I was in Istanbul a few years ago and the citizens of that city had something like 17 daily newspapers from which to choose. Our incurious and ill-informed citizenry can barely keep a handful of major dailies limping along. The one in my region used to be among the nation's premier; now the entire paper is thinner than what a single section used to be and the reporting staff is mostly down to $30K/year newbies who couldn't have been hired there to sharpen pencils even 10 years ago let alone 25 or more. Sad.

This shows once again how much the Media giants care about "Journalism," whatever that quaint word still means today. As for Gannett, however, it hardly matters. One wonders if that company is even aware (let alone "concerned") that its "flagship" publication, USA Today, is often referred to as "McPaper," which is not an ethnic slur but word-play in reference to the menu at McDonald's.

Gannett spinning off its print business? Stands to reason. I'm old enough to remember the 1990s, when it closed down its journalism business.

This is a very sad additional indication of the dumbing down of America. "Those who CAN read but do not, are no better off than those who CAN"T read." As more and more become addicted to "instant news updates" or get their information from biased news sources without the details behind the stories, it will become easier for corrupt politicians to mislead the public into more and more scams and corruption. We are already one of the most basically ignorant citizenries of any country in the world.

The media companies are effectively tossing the newspapers into the corporate version of a sumac-shrouded backyard shed, with the old lawnmower and the broken spools of Christmas lights from the past.

Having read the Statesman Journal since 1977 (along with the Capital Journal for a few years, before it merged with the SJ), it's clear that the newspaper is a shadow of its former self.

This reflects the fact that, as a Gannett-focused blog says, "Gannett is now a TV giant with a side interest in newspapers, its mainstay business since 1906, when Frank Gannett founded the company with a single daily in Elmira, N.Y."

The Statesman Journal really isn't a community newspaper.

It is a corporate newspaper whose mission is to make money for Gannett. Reporting local news in-depth, doing solid investigative reporting, informing citizens about important issues affecting Salem -- these are sidelights now, distractions from the main job of getting enough eyeballs onto the print and online versions of the paper to keep its advertisers.

Sadly, the Gannett spin-off of its newspapers likely will make this situation worse. Another story in Forbes says:

The separation satisfies the cravings of investors who have expressed more interest in broadcast assets than in traditional newspapers, which have struggled with declining advertising revenues. As smaller and more palatable pieces to digest, the two companies will be better positioned to serve a natural shareholder base.

While the combined company may have been wary to pour capital into print operations that produced less upside for shareholders, the publishing business will now have greater cash flow to serve its interests. After receiving print asset stock options, new management will also be incentivized to maximize returns without the safety net of broadcast profits.

Yikes! "Incentivized to maximize returns" means the more profit new management sucks out of the Gannett newspaper business, the more money they personally take home.

Already the Salem Statesman Journal is filled with fluff rather than meaty (OK, tofu'y; I'm a vegetarian) reporting.

A lot of the content comes from USA Today; a lot is a recap of previous stories or reader comments; a lot is outdoors news that I could get online or from guidebooks; a lot is human interest profiles that are fine in moderation, but are out of place on the front page.

Which means it doesn't take me long to read the Statesman Journal, just a few minutes.

I also subscribe to the online New York Times and the print Oregonian, newspapers with considerably more substance. The look and feel of the Statesman Journal web site, like that of other Gannett papers, is a clone of USA Today's.

So the "community" aspect of our so-called community newspaper is fading fast from the local journalistic sky.

Old-timers like me remember when the Statesman Journal reflected the nature and spirit of Salem. Now, the paper just feels like a USA Today look-alike, with the content designed to siphon as much money as possible into the Gannett coffers.

A prescient December 2013 post from the Gannett Blog (not associated with the corporation) provides some great background on how the newspaper business got split off from Gannett's broadcast side. "Digital Divide: Along a journey to transformation, an aging publisher stumbles at a critical crossroads" is well worth reading.

The digital squeeze is all the more worrisome because it comes amid an accelerating decline in the company's still-biggest source of revenue, newspaper advertising, which fell 6% in the last quarter. To be sure, revenue growth pulls back as any company's financial base fattens. Nonetheless, a plateau this soon raises concerns about Gannett's drive to become a digital powerhouse amid bruising competition from more fleet-footed publishers like Facebook and Twitter.

It also underscores the importance of Gannett’s takeover of Dallas TV company Belo. The $2.2 billion tie-up, which could close any time now, is crucial to boosting revenue and earnings -- and holding impatient investors at bay. Indeed, analysts are already asking whether Gannett should spin off its fading newspapers into a separate company after Belo is absorbed, essentially sending them to the corporate equivalent of a nursing home.

Well, now the spin-off has happened.

The Statesman Journal and other Gannett newspapers have been shuffled off to the declining business home, while the cool young kids -- the broadcast and online businesses -- get investor and management attention.

Near the end of the lengthy post there's an apt quote from Warren Buffet, the well-known investor who still believes in newspapers -- yet warns of the sort of skimpy news coverage evident here in Salem.

"We do not believe," Buffett wrote, "that success will come from cutting either the news content or frequency of publication. Indeed, skimpy news coverage will almost certainly lead to skimpy readership. And the less-than-daily publication that is now being tried in some large towns or cities -- while it may improve profits in the short term -- seems certain to diminish the papers’ relevance over time."

The Statesman Journal needs to worry about losing subscribers from both ends of the readership spectrum.

Young people and so-so newspaper readers don't have much loyalty to a daily community paper, so they'll find it easy to dump the Statesman Journal and get the news they want online for free.

Older long-time readers like me are loyal, but not absolutely. We have a breaking point.

That comes when the quality of local news coverage is so poor, when the soup of investigative reporting has been thinned out to such an unsatisfying gruel, when editorial positions are so weakly argued and thought out -- the newspaper we used to read so avidly has become an annoying disappointment.

Hopefully this won't happen. But the news of the Gannett restructuring isn't a good omen for the quality of journalism at the Statesman Journal.

A. Let's be honest: We have no idea what the suffering of people half way around the world, or even next door, is like. Our compassion is conceptual. We try to imagine how we would feel if we were in a dreadful situation we've never experienced. So I don't try to respond in any special way to suffering. There's no point. — Brian Hines, Salem

Q. What can we do as individuals this week to make the world a safer, saner, more peaceful place?

A. The world is not our responsibility. We are responsible for what we can do close to home, which includes what good citizenship used to be about: participating in every election and making well-informed voting choices. I'm tired of being asked to do the job of elected officials. — Brian Hines, Salem

Since Rapid Responders only get 50 words to express themselves, I'll use my blog to expound further on what I was trying to get at.

First, I faced a choice when I sat down to answer the questions. Be honest, or say something fake. I decided to write what felt true to me. I'm glad I did, partly because other people who answered these questions had similar responses.

Dissembling is a big problem that prevents humanity at every level -- local, state, national, world -- from solving our other problems. Our ability to sit down and honestly talk with each other has gone way downhill.

Political, religious, economic, and cultural polarizations drive us into a maze of closed-off corners where almost everybody we associate with agrees with us. We get into the habit of repeating familiar dogmas, losing the ability to discern how we really feel, and how reality outside of our closed-off corner really is.

So honesty is the first and most important policy in ameliorating suffering. Disagreements can be resolved only when we truly know what we are disagreeing about.

Like I said, I don't know what it is like to be a Syrian rebel, an Islamic extremist, a Jewish zealot, a Ukrainian nationalist, or anybody else for that matter. Heck, I don't even know what it is like to be my wife, and I've been married to her for twenty-four years.

Thus imagining what a situation of suffering is like doesn't get me, or anyone else, very far. As other Rapid Responders noted, we Americans have a habit of dashing in and trying to fix complex international problems without understanding what the hell it is we're doing.

Self-righteousness is a terrible motivation for helping other people. So is compassion, even, if an emotional feeling of "I must help" isn't accompanied by a solid grasp of what is possible, what is needed, what the situation demands.

I believe each of us has a natural wisdom in this regard.

Our conscious minds are like the small part of an iceberg that is visible, while a much larger mentality lies beneath the surface. I trust that when I'm moved to do something for someone else, this is a wise decision my brain/mind has come up with, largely unconsciously. I try not to over-think or second-guess myself.

That way lies madness, or at least intense aggravation. Every day my wife and I get lots of emails, letters, and phone calls from organizations begging for our help. Each cause is described as crucial, vital, earth-shakingly important. If we don't act now, disaster awaits.

Which, leaving aside the marketing verbiage, likely rings true for those deeply concerned about the cause. The Statesman Journal chose a few examples of global suffering to center its editorial page theme around. Download Summer of Human Suffering

Over Ukraine, a passenger plane is shot from the sky for reasons unknown and by groups uncertain. In the Middle East, violence rocks Iraq, Syria, Israel, Gaza and elsewhere. From Africa to the Americas, violence based on religion, ethnicity, economics and politics uproots millions from their homes. Drug cartels run parts of Mexico, and their tentacles sink deep into Central America, Africa and the U.S. Parents seeking hope and a better life for their children send them on a covert, uncertain journey to the U.S. Ebola, a catastrophic disease with an exotic name, rages in Africa.

OK. But there is so much more to be concerned and compassionate about. Trying to solve every problem in the world will drain our well of concern and compassion bone-dry.

Our ability to make positive changes close to home is hugely greater than our capacity to alter events halfway around the world.

Yet it is easier to think than to act. So it is possible to feel self-righteous about our compassion for others just because we're thinking about the suffering in other parts of the globe, which takes the pressure off of us to actually act to make things better right here in Salem.

I'm disturbed by how poorly our elected officials are performing these days. This is most evident on the federal level, where Republican obstructionism has taken the notion of a "do-nothing" Congress to an unheard-of level.

However, the problem is ubiquitous. The Salem City Council, Marion County Board of Commissioners, State Legislature -- they all are doing nowhere near what they should to solve pressing social, environmental, and economic problems.

Like I said in my Rapid Responder answer, things have changed. My wife and I are baby-boomers. We've reminisced about how often our parents felt the need to phone or write elected officials to get them to do something that needed to be done, or make donations to meet a pressing community need.

Not often, and my mother was a highly political person.

Back then citizens trusted, by and large with good reason, in representative democracy. Democrats and Republicans worked with each other. They compromised. Their focus was, pretty much, on what was good for the country, not for their political ambitions.

So big things were done.

The United States went to the moon, built the interstate highway system, formed Medicare and Medicaid, passed Civil Rights legislation, created environmental protection agencies. In high school my civics teacher told us our main duty was to educate ourselves about issues and candidates, then be sure to vote for our elected representatives.

They were then supposed to do the governing. Spend tax dollars wisely. Solve problems. Address pressing national and international issues.

I long for those days. Now my wife and I are met with constant communications saying that if we don't email, phone, write, contribute, whatever, those idiots in Washington aren't going to do such-and-such that is good, or will do such-and-such that is bad.

Huh? When did it become my responsibility to do the job of elected officials? Weren't they elected to make decisions, right wrongs, put this country on a positive course? I'm tired of being made to feel like the burden of governing is on my shoulders.

It isn't.

John Kerry and Barack Obama are capable of dealing with international suffering and calamitous events. I'm not. No ordinary citizen is. So I have a problem with the basic premise of the Statesman Journal's recent editorializing.

Yes, compassion is crucial. We live in an interconnected world. However, our elected officials have the primary responsibility of addressing the sorts of problems raised by our local newspaper. What we do here in Salem will have essentially zero effect on those global problems.

We can, though, work to make things better close to home.

Thus I wish more of the Statesman Journal's news and editorial attention would be placed on local issues and concerns, and less on problems beyond our ability to markedly influence.

August 01, 2014

Hey, so maybe the title of this blog post sounds self-centered to you. What do you expect, dude? The author, moi, is a 65 year-old baby boomer. I'm proudly part of the Me Generation.

So naturally I see everything as revolving around the Flower Child center of the universe that we baby boomers brought into being back in the 60's.

Me especially, since I was in college at San Jose State University from 1966 to 1971.

You know, the Bay Area not-Stanford and not-UC Berkeley. The ugly duckling to the south. Which for me and my friends was just a short 57' VW bug smoke-filled drive away from San Francisco: Haight-Ashbury, Winterland, Fillmore, all things psychedelically bright and beautiful.

We weren't smoking cigarettes.

Oh no, we were the freaks, the hippies, the potheads, the stoners, who brought marijuana out of the societal shadows and made it, if not respectable, damn ubiquitous for our generation.

In a sense -- and I can understand if you'd like to make that "In a pitifully marginal sense" -- we were akin to the courageous demonstrators of the Civil Rights movement, the determined feminists of the Women's Rights movement, the brave initiators of the Gay Rights movement, the in-your-face protestors of the Anti-Vietnam War movement.

We set out to change society one toke at a time.

Whether zoning out to Cream, Jefferson Airplane, and Hendrix, or demonstrating that frisbee skills are not lessened one bit by being high (nor driving skills, in my experience), we were unknowingly laying the groundwork for what now seems to be a groundswell of support for changing this nation's marijuana laws.

Enough signatures have been gathered to get on the ballot. Fund-raising seems to be going well. Endorsements are streaming in -- such as from the Oregon State Council for Retired Citizens, Oregon Criminal Defense Lawyers Association, and Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. Also, the Northwest Oregon Labor Council.

Still, we can't take it for granted that the legalization initiative will pass.

So do what you can to help New Approach Oregon. Make a donation. Add your name to their list of supporters. Most importantly, vote for the initiative in November if you live in Oregon.

Remember: this is about ME. And my generation. We're getting old. No, geez, we are old.

We deserve the honor that we'll bestow upon ourselves when weed is legalized, state by state. We'll be able to tell our grandchildren...

"Honey, when you grow up your grandpappy made it possible for you to enjoy pot without fear of the law -- a far cry from how it was in the olden times. Why, did I ever tell you..."

And why not, grandchild? I was Jesus personified back in the 60's (outwardly at least). Am I not entitled to retell the gospel of my exploits with cannabis and other mind-altering substances?

In the case of marijuana, at least, a substance that cries out for sensible legalization, as ably detailed in a recent series of New York Times editorials. This shows that the times are indeed a'changing when it comes to legalizing pot.

Which is estimated to bring in $38 million each year in taxes to benefit Oregon's schools, police, drug treatment, drug prevention and mental health programs.

A great reason, among many, to legalize marijuana. Let's just keep in mind this central reason: to honor the greatest (pot-smoking) generation, us baby boomers.